How unusual has the weather been? No one event is "caused" by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.

When it comes to being a traveling author, it helps that I did so much theater in college, and that I've taught for many years as well. I generally feel comfortable as a performer of my own work -- and my own life. And yet there's always a trace of sadness on the road, too.

More than two decades ago, in the early 1990s, the task at hand for some of us in Detroit was still to try to save Tiger Stadium. It's a long story, but in a city with a Third World-level infant mortality rate and many other severe problems, there was a lot more at stake than baseball or nostalgia.

Hell has frozen over. Hell, Michigan that is. Hell is a charming little hamlet an hour outside Detroit, near Ann Arbor. Established in the 1840s, around the same time Michigan last experienced such hellish weather.

I grew up in Detroit, where the snow hit the ground in early November and stayed there through April. Snowfall wasn't remarkable; it was a given. I was a Detroit Tigers fan and I remember, more than once, watching shivering ball players attempting to play ball as snow fell on Opening Day.